O'Donnell may be average American

Rarely has the political commentariat been so unified in its opinion: Up in Delaware, the wacko candidate in the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate would be easy prey for the calm and comfortable former governor, who was also a member of the U.S. House.

Christine O’Donnell, 41, unemployed and portrayed pretty much as an outright thief, would be dogmeat when Mike Castle, 71, who had never lost an election, got done with her.

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The deal was done, the outcome guaranteed, the cake baked.

Castle then could win the general election, running against a Democrat of no special distinction. Which would mean that Republicans could actually pick up 10 seats on Nov. 2, giving them control of the Senate.

It was an easy choice for Republicans voting in the primary: Elect Castle and possibly win the Senate, or elect O’Donnell and possibly see press accounts about her get even worse.

According to published accounts, O’Donnell was using campaign funds for half her rent and $545.98 to purchase a mattress or mattresses from Mattress Giant.

She “hasn’t had a steady job in years,” according to one account, and she had lied about being a graduate of Fairleigh Dickinson University, which had sued for unpaid student loans. She also had failed to pay her federal taxes and defaulted on her house payments.

Which, to some, made her an average American. They found it easy to identify with her, feel her pain and vote for her.

After all, what was $545.98 for mattresses compared with the hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarks Congress approved every year or the trillions of dollars it spent on wars?

But then, there was the wackiness factor. O’Donnell believes in sexual abstinence for those not married (how wacky can you get?) and has denounced masturbation as a form of “lust.”

Critics seized — so to speak — on that last one, though Democratic commentator Paul Begala, an excellent political analyst, could not bring himself to say the word on CNN recently, preferring “self-gratification” (which sounds about 10 times worse to me).

O’Donnell also has called President Barack Obama “anti-American” and, according to The New York Times, “has taken positions against federal financing for stem cell research, is opposed to abortion even in cases of rape and favors tough penalties against businesses that hire illegal immigrants. She has also suggested in past television interviews that evolution is soft science and questioned the utility of financing AIDS programs.”